What Is and Should Be Next for This Year's Oscar Winners

What's next for the four winners of the acting prizes last night? Let's analyze their future plans and make some handy suggestions as to what they should follow up the biggest moments of their careers with.

Cate Blanchett

What She's Doing: One never really has to worry about Cate Blanchett's career. In 2014, she'll be in the final installment of the Hobbit trilogy (finally!) as Galadriel and will voice a character in the sequel to How To Train Your Dragon. Also, per Sarah Paulson on the Oscars red carpet, filming on Todd Haynes' Carol, starring Blanchett, Paulson, and Rooney Mara, began this week. Further ahead, she's in Kenneth Branagh's live action Cinderella, as the wicked stepmother. As for less-commercial fare, she's in not one but two Terrence Malick projects due in the next year or two.

What She Should Be Doing: Honestly, we have faith in Cate. We wouldn't deign to make a decision for her considering her slate is so interesting and varied.

Matthew McConaughey

What He's Doing: With McConaughey's Oscar win, it looks like we're headed beyond the period of McConaissance to McConenlightenment. McConaughey will next be seen in the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar, which no one really knows much about but everyone is expecting to be good. He's also attached to Sea of Trees, a Gus Van Sant film. The one blip on his radar may be Thunder Run, which he's been attached to since 2011, before Magic Mike times. Thunder Run is an adaptation of a book from journalist David Zucchino, but the plan was/is to make the film "entirely CGI, 3-D." That sounds like a risky endeavor and McConaughey's costars in this one, Gerard Butler and Sam Worthington, don't have the best pedigrees.

What He Should Be Doing: We'd actually be interested in seeing a bit of a regression for McConaughey. Certainly no one would like to see him return to his Failure to Launch-era ways, but now that he's shown he can pick good material, maybe he can make a good rom com again. At least a good rom com with nihilistic philosophical ramblings.

Lupita Nyong'o

What She Should be Doing: First off, she should be the lead in something. Lupita's a star and she needs to be at the center of a project, not just the scene stealer on the sidelines. What should that project be, though? Patsey was, to say the least, an incredibly intense role, but Lupita has a range that she needs to show off. At Yale Drama School, Lupita played Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. She starred in a Kenyan soap opera. She should be a lead in a project in which she plays a woman who isn't being victimized because it would be really terrible if Hollywood decided to typecast her as such.

Basically, the world is Lupita's oyster right now. Have her lead a romantic dramedy opposite Michael B. Jordan or Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Make her a superhero! And if she wants to step away from Hollywood for a bit, a good move might be to head to Broadway. Make a splash there as a classic heroine, then head back to the big screen.

(For what it's worth, we're not ruling out a buddy comedy featuring her and J.Law.)

Jared Leto

What He Should Be Doing: A My So-Called Life reunion show of course! Did Jordan ever learn to read? We need to know! But in all seriousness, what should Leto do? Should he capitalize on his obvious talents on display in Dallas Buyers Club? Or should he return to his emo rock lifestyle? Maybe there's a solution somewhere in the middle: wouldn't he fit right in with a movie of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson? If not as the title character, surely as a scheming Henry Clay.